urmured:
"Oh! that poor papa, who has gone to hunt for money! Shall I run after
him to tell him that we've got enough for to-day?"

Then the priest, who was already in the passage, heard the woman answer:
"Oh! he's far away if he's still walking. He'll p'raps come back right
enough."

However, as Pierre, with buzzing head and grief-stricken heart, hastily
escaped out of that frightful house of suffering, he perceived to his
astonishment Salvat and Victor Mathis standing erect in a corner of the
filthy courtyard, where the stench was so pestilential. They had come
downstairs, there to continue their interrupted colloquy. And again, they
were talking in very low tones, and very quickly, mouth to mouth,
absorbed in the violent thoughts which made their eyes flare. But they
heard the priest's footsteps, recognised him, and suddenly becoming cold
and calm, exchanged an energetic hand-shake without uttering another
word. Victor went up towards Montmartre, whilst Salvat hesitated like a
man who is consulting destiny. Then, as if trusting himself to stern
chance, drawing up his thin figure, the figure of a weary, hungry toiler,
he turned into the Rue Marcadet, and walked towards Paris, his tool-bag
still under his arm.

For an instant Pierre felt a desire to run and call to him that his
little girl wished him to go back again. But the same feeling of
uneasiness as before came over the priest--a commingling of discretion
and fear, a covert conviction that nothing could stay destiny. And he
himself was no longer calm, no longer experienced the icy, despairing
distress of the early morning. On finding himself again in the street,
amidst the quivering fog, he felt the fever, the glow of charity which
the sight of such frightful wretchedness had ignited, once more within
him. No, no! such suffering was too much; he wished to struggle still, to
save Laveuve and restore a little joy to all those poor folk. The new
experiment presented itself with that city of Paris which he had seen
shrouded as with ashes, so mysterious and so perturbing beneath the
threat of inevitable justice. And he dreamed of a huge sun bringing
health and fruitfulness, which would make of the huge city the fertile
field where would sprout the better world of to-morrow.

II. WEALTH AND WORLDLINESS

THAT same morning, as was the case nearly every day, some intimates were
expected to _dejeuner_ at the Duvillards', a few friends who more or less
invited t